Monday, April 1, 2013

The U.S. Navy is moving a warship and a sea-based radar platform closer to the North Korean coast in order to monitor that country's military moves, including possible new missile launches, a Defense Department official said Monday.

The decision to move at least one ship, the destroyer USS John S. McCain, and the oil rig-like SBX-1 are the first of what may be other naval deployments, CNN has learned.

They follow weeks of belligerent rhetoric from North Korea, including threats to use nuclear weapons.

Greece will extend a deadline for the recapitalization of its banks by a few weeks, possibly until the end of May, Greek central bank chief George Provopoulos said on Monday.

Greek banks, which are being recapitalized with funds from the country's latest EU/IMF bailout, have been lobbying for the terms of the recapitalization scheme to be sweetened and also sought an extension to an end-April deadline for the plan.

"There will be a small extension of a few weeks, it may be pushed to the end of May," Provopoulos told state TV.

The United States has positioned a warship off the Korean coast as a shield against ballistic missile attack as South Korea's new president vowed swift retaliation against a North Korean strike amid soaring tensions on the peninsula.

But Washington also said it had seen no worrisome mobilization of armed forces by the North Koreans despite bellicose rhetoric over a ramping up of international sanctions against Pyongyang over nuclear weapons tests.

The Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky died after spending his life standing up for justice in a “corrupt world”, his daughter claimed.

The former Kremlin critic was found apparently hanged at his Berkshire mansion last week, although the exact circumstances of his death are still unclear.

In a statement issued by Thames Valley Police today, Arina Berezovsky praised her father’s honesty. She said: “Unfortunately, honesty does not ‘cut it’ in this corrupt world and is often mistaken for being manipulative. He had a certain joy for life and never took anything he had for granted.

Health officials say they still don’t understand how a lesser-known bird flu virus was able to kill two men and seriously sicken a woman in China, but that it’s unlikely that it can spread easily among humans.

Two men in Shanghai became the first known human fatalities from the H7N9 bird flu virus after contracting it in February. A woman in the eastern city of Chuzhou remains in serious condition, China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission said.

It was unclear how the three patients became infected, the health agency said. It sought to calm fears about the virus but provided few details about each case. Authorities have not described the patients’ occupations or said whether they had come into contact with birds or other animals.

The health authority noted, however, that two sons of one of the Shanghai men also suffered from acute pneumonia, one of whom died, and the source of their infection is still unknown.

PEOPLES LIBERATION ARMY, AIR FORCE AND NAVY HAVE BEEN MOVING UNREPORTED SINCE MID-MARCH, INCOMING REPORTS STATE, WITH MOBILIZATION ON THE BORDER WITH NORTH KOREA NOW TAKING PLACE. WE WILL KEEP A CLOSE EYE ON THE STORY AND UPDATE YOU AS INFORMATION COMES IN.IN THE EVENT OF HOSTILITIES, PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL OTHER NEWS MAY BE CURTAILED ON THE COMING CRISIS. PLEASE STAND BY.

The “American empire” will fall this year, the head of Iran’s Basij forces claimed Sunday, a message that was approved by the Islamic regime’s supreme leader.

“America should not think that with some diplomatic dialogue it can solve its dossier (problem) with the nation of Iran,” Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naghdi said. “The path of this land is directed by the martyrs. America with its hollow slogans … thinks the Iranian nation will believe it.”

The Basij commander was speaking to an audience of the 10th conference of “Journey of Enlightened Land” commemorating the “martyrs” of the eight-year war with Iraq, according to the Journalist Club, an outlet run by the Revolutionary Guards intelligence division.

Naghdi called President Obama’s actions deceitful, saying, “Obama in letters sent to the Islamic Republic promised to put an end to the Iranian nuclear dossier but … reacted in a different way.”

The 23-year-old girlfriend of the late Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky has said she does not believe he killed himself.

Katerina Sabirova told the Russian magazine New Times that the exiled tycoon, who was found dead at his Berkshire mansion last month, had been planning to go on holiday with her to Israel.

An inquest has heard Mr Berezovsky - an outspoken critic of president Vladimir Putin - was found on his bathroom floor with a "ligature around his neck" and that a similar piece of material was on the shower rail above him.

CUMBRIA police can confirm that at approximately 4pm today, they attended an incident at Lake Windermere, where it was reported that three people on a private on a boat on Lake Windermere were having serious breathing difficulties.

Police attended along with an Ambulance crew. A 36 year old woman and a 10 year old girl, both from the Leyland area, were treated at the scene and then air lifted to Royal Lancaster Infirmary, unfortunately both have since tragically died. A man, who was also on the boat, is still receiving treatment at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary.

Three people were taken to the hospital Thursday afternoon after what was described as a "white powder" was found at a business in Abingdon, the Harford County Volunteer Fire & EMS Association said.

The substance was found to be not hazardous, association spokesman Rich Gardiner said.

The powder was found at about 1:30 p.m. at Bogan's Plumbing, in the 1300 block of Continental Drive, near Governor Court. Eddie Hopkins, spokesman for the Harford County Sheriff's Office, said the powder was found in a package mailed to the business.

An envelope full of white powder reached the mail room of Umatilla's Two Rivers Correctional Institution on Friday morning, causing an evacuation of the prison's administration building.

Two staffers who came in contact with the powder at about 10:30 a.m. quickly hit the showers and a state hazardous materials unit reached the building in Haz-Mat suits, according to Vicki Reynolds, a prison spokeswoman.

The powder, which came in a standard-sized envelope, was examined by officials with the State Fire Marshal's Hazardous Materials Unit and the Umatilla Fire Department. They ruled the material posed no harm at 12:15 p.m., Reynolds said.

In the study of the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Veterinary Virology and Microbiology samples of pathological material, selected from six domestic pigs died in Alagir area and one of dead pigs in the Nart-Ardon's Republic of North Ossetia - Alania, identified the genetic material of the African swine fever, reports Rosselkhoznadzor RF.

At the outbreak of the disease state veterinary service of the republic under the control of Rosselkhoznadzor for the Republic of North Ossetia - Alania being taken to contain and prevent further spread of the disease.

The last outbreak of African swine fever in the Republic was registered in 2009 in domestic pigs. One of the affected areas was Alagirsky.

ONLY three swine flu patients are currently receiving treatment at Mumbwa district hospital, Ministry of Health spokesperson Dr Kamoto Mbewe has confirmed.

In a statement released in Lusaka on Thursday, Dr Mbewe stated that the outbreak of swine flu, medically known as Influenza H1N1, in Serenje and Mumbwa districts in Central Province had continued to stabilise as the ministry had put up stringent measures to prevent the disease from spreading to other provinces.

"Currently, there are no reports of any new infections in Serenje and only three people are being treated for the disease in Mumbwa district. The Ministry of Health continues to be vigilant in monitoring the disease to ensure that it does not spread to other parts of Zambia. Among the measures that government has put in place to control the spread of the outbreak is the sensitisation of the public in the affected areas to avoid crowded places, cover their months with handkerchiefs when coughing and to avoid unnecessary handshakes," Dr Mbewe stated.

Two more persons have died of swine flu, one in Pune and the other in Pimpri Chinchwad, taking the total number of deaths due to the infection in both cities to 20 since January. Of these, 13 have occurred in March.

The Gulf-Arab state hanged three convicted murderers, a Pakistani, a Saudi and a stateless Arab man state news agency KUNA reported. The condemned men had been found guilty in three separate murder cases. Authorities had invited journalists from Kuwaiti publications to witness the executions.

An Oklahoma dentist accused of putting thousands of patients at risk of Hepatitis and HIV because he prodded their mouths with filthy instruments has been found hiding out in Arizona.

As some 7,000 patients began getting checked for hepatitis or HIV on the weekend, the Tulsa oral surgeon, Dr W. Scott Harrington, who has refused to comment on the allegations of dangerously poor hygiene at his clinics, was holed up at his second home in Phoenix, ABC News reported.

Health officials opened their investigation into Harrington's surgeries after a patient with no known risk factors tested positive for both hepatitis C and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. It turned out the person was a patient of Harrington's and had recently had a dental procedure at one of his clinics.

'Aquarius: The Age of Evil' examines the history of the new world order. It demonstrates that the new world order is New Age oriented. The Zeitgeist films and movement are exposed and shown to have ties to the New Age, Theosophy, Freemasonry and the new world order movements.

A female foreign tourist was kidnapped, raped and robbed on a minibus in Rio de Janeiro, police said, highlighting security concerns in the Brazilian city that will host matches in the 2014 World Cup and will put on the Summer Olympics two years later.

A male foreign tourist on the minibus was also held captive and robbed, according to Rio police.

Police said they would not release the identities or nationalities of the victims.

A terminal at Detroit Metropolitan Airport was evacuated for about two hours Monday morning due to concerns over a suspicious device.

The north terminal -- the smaller of the two at the airport -- was cleared to reopen around 8:30 a.m., an airport spokesman said.

Earlier, screeners with the Transportation Security Administration noticed something suspicious in a passenger's carry-on luggage, said airport spokesman Michael Conway. Explosive teams looked into it, and in the meantime passengers in the terminal were moved "a safe distance away," he said.

Gender segregation is already in effective in the majority of schools in the Palestinian territory but from the next school year, it will be enforced by law in every one of Gaza's education establishments, including Christian and private schools and those run by the United Nations.

"We are a Muslim people. We do not need to make people Muslims and we are doing what serves our people and their culture," Waleed Mezher, a legal advisor to the ministry of education told Reuters, explaining that the Hamas government was attempting to protect conservative Muslim values with legislation.

China's commercial hub Shanghai is stepping up monitoring after a new strain of bird flu killed two people, state media has said.

The government's National Health and Family Planning Commission said over the weekend that two men - aged 87 and 27 - died in Shanghai in early March after being infected by H7N9 avian influenza.

A 35-year-old woman in the eastern province of Anhui, near Shanghai, is in a critical condition after developing the sub-type which has not previously been transmitted to humans.

The city's health bureau has ordered hospitals to strengthen monitoring and supervision of respiratory illness cases, but authorities are unsure how the three became infected, according to the Shanghai Daily newspaper.

Judge Peter Bowers (right) handed Mark Martin (left) another suspended prison sentence at Teesside Crown Court after saying the offender would 'suffer badly' in jail. The 24-year-old had also been using his brother's computer to download other vile pictures of young boys and girls. Last year, Judge Bowers caused public outrage for describing serial burglar Richard Rochford, 26, as 'courageous' and sparing him a jail sentence.

Falling levels of safety and security highlighted by the gang rape of a young student on a bus have led to a 25% slump in the number of tourists visiting the country, a survey of tour operators has revealed.

And it says that since December, when the attack occurred, the number of women tourists going to the country has gone down by 35%.

A survey by the Associated Chambers of Commerce & Industry of India (Assocham) says foreigners' fears and the global economic slowdown have combined to hit badly the number of visitors.

Investigators have not determined how fast the driver - described as a male in his 30s - was going at the time of the crash but the car went about 10 to 20 feet into the store in San Jose, California. After the crash at around 11.15am, the unidentified driver got out of his vehicle and used a blunt object to attack people. The driver was later arrested.

The death toll from the collapse of a multi-storey building in Tanzania has risen to 34 after more bodies were pulled from the rubble, a senior government official said on Monday.

Rescue workers at the site in a district in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam have now cleared most of the debris and reached the basement of the building that caved in on Friday morning. It is likely more bodies could be found.

Tanzania's buoyant economy has fuelled a building boom, especially in Kariakoo and the city center. But the speed of construction has raised concerns about safety standards.

Buoyed by solid finances, roaring exports and low unemployment, Germany increasingly sees itself as the only grown-up in Europe, responsible for bringing wayward children into line to hold the family together.

The children are not enjoying it. Some, such as the Cypriots and Greeks and many Italians and Spaniards, are openly resentful of "Mutti" (mum), as Berlin officials privately call Chancellor Angela Merkel. Others, such as the French, are sulking.

The mood among German politicians and officials is one of economic self-confidence tinged with a sense of parental duty to provide the euro zone with stiff-backed leadership, even if that makes them unpopular in Europe.

Accused theater gunman James Holmes returns to a Colorado court on Monday, where prosecutors will reveal if they intend to seek the death penalty against the former graduate student for the "Dark Knight" shooting rampage that killed 12 moviegoers.

It is widely expected that Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler will attempt to win a death sentence against the 25-year-old California native.

Brauchler already has announced he has a death penalty lawyer on the prosecution team and he rejected a defense offer to let Holmes plead guilty and serve a life sentence if capital punishment is taken off the table.

That killing followed a statewide alert last December which said the Aryan Brotherhood, an organised crime syndicate, was "actively planning retaliation against law enforcement officials".

Kaufman Police Chief Chris Aulbaugh told the Dallas Morning News: "It was a shock with Mark Hasse, and now you can just imagine the double shock and until we know what happened, I really can't confirm that it's related but you always have to assume until it's proven otherwise."

The newspaper reported that authorities were providing security at the homes of others who feared they could also be targeted.

"Everybody's a little on edge and a little shocked," said Darren Rovell, mayor of the nearby town of Forney. "It appears this was not a random act."

As Britain leaves behind what looks to have been the coldest March for more than 50 years, forecasters are warning it will stay cold for another week at least.

Meteorologists are blaming the bad weather on the position of the jet stream, a narrow band of very strong winds which tends to move from west to east across the Atlantic, bringing our weather systems with it.

Sky News weather presenter Isobel Lang said: "The jet stream is currently displaced well to the south of its usual position across the north Atlantic and Europe, located across the Azores, Spain and the Mediterranean.

David Cameron has been accused of stoking 'kneejerk xenophobia' by a European commissioner over his 'unintelligent' accusations of benefit tourism among EU migrants.

Responding to the Prime Minster's speech last week in which he vowed to restrict access to housing benefits and the NHS for those coming to the UK under EU free-movement rules, the European commissioner for employment, social affairs and inclusion, László Andor, told the Observer his claims were misleading.

At a meeting of EU interior ministers in Brussels last week, German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich (Christian Social Union, CSU) reiterated that he would prevent the inclusion of Romania and Bulgaria in the Schengen agreement, which lifts routine border controls between most EU countries. He indicated that he would use Germany’s veto if necessary.

An unemployed Iraqi 'benefit queen' charged £4,000 a week to sublet a taxpayer funded £2million flat, it has been claimed.

Bushra al-Rahimi is claimed to have rented out the flat to a family of Kuwaiti tourists, while also being in receipt of housing benefits from Westminster city council to cover the cost of the city centre five-bedroom property.

Al-Rahimi and her family have now been re-housed at taxpayers' expense in nearby Islington, in a block of flats where another property is let at £5,000 a month.

Jonathan Taylor, 44, an IT teacher at Christ the King School in Arnold, Nottinghamshire, was travelling back from a pub at Matrei in the Austrian East Tyrol region at when he fell. The group of 48 pupils, aged 14 to 15, are cutting short their week-long holiday at the resort in Grossglockner (pictured) and are expected to return home today.

WPC Kelly Jones (pictured top left) is suing Steve Jones (top right) after she tripped over the kerb, circled, while investigating a break-in at his garage in Thetford, Norfolk (above). It comes as it emerged police officers are being encouraged to make the claims by a hotline run by the Police Federation. Much of the £42million paid out over the past two years is taxpayer-funded.

In a case that has caused uproar, a policewoman is suing the man who dialled 999 to report a burglary because she tripped over a kerbstone at his property.

Kelly Jones, 33, is seeking a five-figure sum for injuries to her leg and wrist last August. She was well enough however to carry on the search for the suspected intruder.

In Germany, the citizens feel aggrieved. They perceive their country as a generous donor of hard-earned cash to peoples who have let their finances go to ruin.

German taxpayers donate, the argument runs, to help those less industrious than themselves. And what, they wonder, do they get in return? Nothing but ingratitude and insult. So it seems to some Germans.

Outside the country, on the other hand, it does not seem like that at all. Perceptions are inverted. Instead of gratitude for the gifts donated, Germans feel the coldness of ingratitude for the strings attached.

Or the heat of angry insult. The Spanish daily El Pais published (and then apologised for) a piece which said that conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel "like Hitler, has declared war on the rest of the continent".

Nigerian soldiers killed 14 suspected Islamist insurgents on Sunday during a dawn raid on a house in the main northern city of Kano, the military said.

Islamist sect Boko Haram wants to carve an Islamic state out of Nigeria. It and other Islamist groups have become the main threat to stability on Africa's top oil-producing state and increasingly menace neighbours like Cameroon.

Boko Haram has killed hundreds in gun and bomb attacks, including 25 in Kano earlier in March, since it intensified an insurgency two years ago.

A Texas community is on edge after a district attorney who said he would put away the "scum" who killed a colleague two months ago was shot to death alongside his wife in his home Saturday night.

Kaufman County Judge Bruce Wood said he thought there was a "strong connection" between the slayings of Mike and Cynthia McLelland and the shooting death of Kaufman County Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse, who was killed on his way to work in January.

Hasse and McLelland "worked on similar cases very closely," said Wood, the county's top elected official.

The euro's challenge to the international status of the US dollar has been set back a generation as new data show developing countries dumping the European currency from their official reserves.

Central banks in developing countries sold €45bn of euros in 2012, according to data compiled by the International Monetary Fund, cutting their holdings of the currency by 8 per cent.

This highlights the damage Europe's sovereign debt crisis has done to its standing in the international financial system as the chance of rivalling the dollar -- one dream of the single currency's founders -- slips away.

The hunt is on to find ways to circumnavigate the new draconian capital controls in Cyprus and get money off the island.

At least three people have attempted to flee the island in recent weeks with more than €200,000 in cash on their person, according to official sources. The money was in all cases confiscated and the people questioned by the authorities.

Individuals have only been allowed to take €1,000 a day out of the country since Thursday under strict capital controls designed to prevent a bank run. The imposition of the eurozone's first ever capital controls followed the re-opening of the country's two banks for the first time after the European Union and International Monetary Fund bailout.

The United States deployed stealth fighter jets to South Korea on Sunday as part of ongoing joint military exercises between the two countries, a senior U.S. defense official said.

The F-22 Raptors were sent to the main U.S. Air Force Base in South Korea amid spiking tensions on the Korean peninsula. The U.S. military command in South Korea said they were deployed to support air drills as part of the annual Foal Eagle training exercises, which are carried out in accordance with the armistice that put an end to armed hostilities in 1953.

North Korea has been ramping up its rhetoric and military show of force in response to the annual joint military exercises, declaring the armistice invalid on March 11, 10 days after Foal Eagle began. It is something Pyongyang has done before during heightened tensions.

The Russian government will not aid businesses that have lost money in Cyprus, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said, underscoring Moscow's resolve to clamp down on the flight of capital to offshore financial centers.

Major account holders, many of them Russian, will lose up to 60 percent of their deposits over 100,000 euros ($128,400) at Cyprus's largest bank under a European Union bailout to save the Mediterranean island from bankruptcy.

If Russians lose money "it's a terrible shame, but the Russian government will not take any action in such a situation," Shuvalov was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying in a television interview on Sunday night.

South Korea will strike back quickly if the North stages any attack on its territory, the new president in Seoul warned on Monday, as tensions ratcheted higher on the Korean peninsula amid shrill rhetoric from Pyongyang and the U.S. deployment of radar-evading fighter planes.

North Korea says the region is on the brink of a nuclear war in the wake of United Nations sanctions imposed for its February nuclear test and a series of joint U.S. and South Korean military drills that have included a rare U.S. show of aerial power.

Small companies struggling to repay loans in Italy and Spain signal bigger problems on the horizon for the euro zone after the dust has settled on Cyprus's last-ditch bailout this week.

Defaults by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), easily the biggest employers in Spain and Italy, are rising at a worrying clip, spelling trouble for the banks and two countries at the heart of Europe's debt crisis.

"You can be sure that if these companies' bad debts rise, you're going to see more bad loans to families, and credit card bills that won't be paid," said Javier Santoma, finance professor at Spain's IESE business school.

When Zijin Mining Group threatened to move its headquarters some 270 kms from its home county of Shanghang to Xiamen on China's southeast coast, a local Communist Party boss rushed to confront the company's chairman Chen Jinghe.

"If you want to move, you'll have to move the Zijin Mountain to Xiamen as well," the official told Chen, referring to a vast local mine that has helped transform the firm into China's top gold producer and second-biggest copper miner.

Exxon Mobil on Sunday continued cleanup of a pipeline spill that spewed thousands of barrels of heavy Canadian crude in Arkansas as opponents of oil sands development latched on to the incident to attack plans to build the Keystone XL line.

Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers said on Sunday that crews had yet to excavate the area around the pipeline breach, a needed step before the company can estimate how long repairs will take and when the line might restart.

"I can't speculate on when it will happen," Jeffers said. "Excavation is necessary as part of an investigation to determine the cause of the incident."

South Korea will strike back quickly if the North stages any attack on its territory, the new president in Seoul warned on Monday, as tensions ratcheted higher on the Korean peninsula amid shrill rhetoric from Pyongyang and the U.S. deployment of radar-evading fighter planes.

North Korea says the region is on the brink of a nuclear war in the wake of United Nations sanctions imposed for its February nuclear test and a series of joint U.S. and South Korean military drills that have included a rare U.S. show of aerial power.

North Korea said on Saturday it was entering a "state of war" with South Korea in response to what it termed the "hostile" military drills being staged in the South. But there have been no signs of unusual activity in the North's military to suggest an imminent aggression, a South Korean defense ministry official said last week.

An Alaska State Trooper helicopter carrying two troopers and a rescued snowmobiler crashed Saturday night in the south-central part of the state, and no survivors have been found, an agency spokeswoman said.

Trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters said the crash site was spotted Sunday, but she could not immediately confirm that the three on board were killed.

Wreckage of the helicopter burned, but Peters said it was not known how the fire started or how long it lasted.

Nearly 100 vehicles crashed Sunday along a mountainous, foggy stretch of interstate near the Virginia-North Carolina border, killing three people and injuring 25 others.

Police said traffic along Interstate 77 in southwest Virginia backed up for about 8 miles in the southbound lanes after the accidents. Authorities closed the northbound lanes so that fire trucks, ambulances and police could get to the series of chain-reaction wrecks.

Virginia State Police determined there were 17 separate crashes involving 95 vehicles within a mile span near the base of Fancy Gap Mountain, spokeswoman Corinne Geller said. The crashes began around 1:15 p.m. Sunday when there was heavy fog in the area.

One worker died and three others were injured Sunday morning when a heavy piece of equipment fell on them at an Arkansas nuclear plant, officials said.

The workers were moving the equipment from the turbine building at an Entergy Arkansas plant in Russellville, about 70 miles northwest of Little Rock. The three injured workers were taken to a hospital. The company stressed that there is no danger to the public.

The Arkansas Nuclear One plant provides about 30 percent of the state’s energy demand, according to Entergy.